NetWitness Platform vs Sentinel comparison

NetWitness and OpenText are both solutions in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category. NetWitness is ranked #29 with an average rating of 8.0, while OpenText is ranked #13 with an average rating of 8.2. NetWitness holds a 0.6% mindshare in SIEM, compared to OpenText’s 3.5% mindshare. Additionally, 75% of NetWitness users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 81% of OpenText users who would recommend it.

NetWitness Platform

Read 37 NetWitness Platform reviews

1,052 Views
579 Comparison Views

75% willing to recommend

Sentinel

Read 16 Sentinel reviews

2,289 Views
2,249 Comparison Views

81% willing to recommend

NetWitness Platform

Sentinel

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

NetWitness Platform and Sentinel are leading contenders in the cybersecurity market. Sentinel seems to have the upper hand due to its advanced functionality and effectiveness, which users feel justifies its pricing.

Features: NetWitness Platform offers strong analytics, real-time monitoring capabilities, and robust support services. Sentinel features integration with other Microsoft services, advanced threat detection, and seamless integration in advanced networking environments.

Room For Improvement: NetWitness Platform needs enhanced scalability, better threat intelligence capabilities, and improved customization options. Sentinel could benefit from more user-friendly setup processes, better customization options, and improved user interfaces.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: NetWitness Platform users find customer support highly responsive but face deployment challenges. Sentinel offers quick deployment, integrates easily into existing Microsoft infrastructures, and has adequate customer support.

Pricing and ROI: NetWitness Platform is considered expensive by some users but offers justifiable ROI due to its high performance. Sentinel, while also not cheap, is viewed as providing good value due to its extensive features and integration capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed NetWitness Platform vs. Sentinel Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

NetWitness Platform vs. Sentinel

June 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

NetWitness Platform

Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)

29th

Average Rating

7.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Log Management (38th)

Sentinel

Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)

13th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of NetWitness Platform is 0.6%, down from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sentinel is 3.5%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)

Featured Reviews

MOTASHIM Al Razi

CISO at One Bank Limited

It is a stable solution, but they should make the user interface easier to understand

The solution's initial setup takes work. We have to organize multiple paths and many features. The deployment process takes less than a week. But it takes a month to complete if we want to make the solution smarter by integrating it with various devices. I rate the process as a six out of ten.

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JaideepSingh

Technology Specialist at a government with 51-200 employees

An automated solution that helped me detect threats in less than half the time it used to take

Sentinel gave us logs to tell us what's going right and wrong in your environment so we could secure the network. We also got multiple kinds of logs. By running some queries from the logs, we could find and fix the anomalies in the environment. Sentinel's threat visibility was great at telling us if we had something going on in our environment. We had to set up alerts in our environment based on the logs. If we had the right alerts set up, we got notified about threats and where security was lacking, so we could also take care of that. Sentinel's threat intelligence helped us prepare and take proactive steps for potential threats before they hit. Having preparation before a threat has helped our security operations. When I was using it, I used to keep going into my dashboards and looking for any threats on a weekly basis, or maybe two or three times a week. Based on that, we would recommend certain changes to the server and infrastructure teams to block or allow some ports. Sentinel's threat intelligence helped plan security against risks.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The most valuable features are the packet inspection and the automated incident response."

"I can have enterprise security, email security, next generation firewall security log, HIDS and NIDS logs, etc. all on the same dashboard. It makes it easy to pinpoint or correlate our server to this. I can find out if there is lateral movement. This is the biggest advantage of this solution."

"Performance and reporting are very good."

"It's fully scalable. There is no limit. Of course, the license limits per day the number of terabytes. In my opinion, it's very flexible."

"It's quite economical compared to other solutions in the market."

"The product has a user-friendly interface and a valuable feature for threat intelligence integration."

"The most valuable feature is that we can create our own connectors for any application, and NetWitness provides the training and tools to do it."

"The newer 11.5 version that my team is using has found it to have good mapping."

More NetWitness Platform pros

"The solution lets us get all the logs properly and regularly monitor customer infrastructure."

"We can do advanced hunting queries and modify SQL queries to get desired results based on the rules triggering over the console."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is that it provides a central locking system for many event sources."

"It makes everything easier by automating some tasks and growing with our needs."

"The solution's Kusto Query Language (KQL) execution time is pretty good."

"One of the most valuable features is the business intelligence engine. It's very important because it keeps track of everything that's happening and alerts us if something is different than expected. The first time I used it, I was shocked at how well it performed. Another valuable feature that I think makes this product worth the price you pay for it is that it connects to basically every system that provides some form of logging, and it's very easy to set up what triggers this."

"The native integration with out-of-the box format is hassle free and allows data to be used advantageously."

"The stability is phenomenal and we never had any issues with downtime or even had to restart."

More Sentinel pros

Cons

"The solution should have more integration capabilities with different platforms."

"Security needs improvement."

"They should implement algorithms to digest that data and produce additional, more advanced reporting, alerting and support of internal security teams."

"Technical support could be improved."

"Lots of competing products have vulnerability protection built into their products, and this solution would be improved by including that support."

"The user interface is a little bit difficult for new users and it needs to be improved."

"The threat detection capability and centralizing and upgrading capability need to be improved. The threat alert capability needs to be improved as well because there is some lag time at present. They need to work on their database search too."

"There is no support for this product in this country, so problems have to be resolved through global technical teams."

More NetWitness Platform cons

"The solution does not allow outsourced authorizations."

"There are still a few vendor-specific devices for which Sentinel needs to work on integration, such as Netskope devices."

"This product's connection to certain types of cloud systems could be improved. We can do Microsoft, Google, and Amazon, but there are a lot of other things happening in the cloud that we do not connect well enough to. This product could be improved with better connection to cloud-based solutions."

"The dashboard and customer view should be improved"

"You need a lot of Unix scripting knowledge in order to manage the tool, which is one of the main issues that we faced."

"There is no integration in the web-side of the tool."

"I rate Sentinel a six out of ten for scalability."

"It is an ancient product."

More Sentinel cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It provides tools to assist in selecting the appropriate license and usage scenarios."

"Our license is for one year."

"The product is expensive."

"In comparison to other SIEM solutions such as Splunk, NetWitness is less costly."

"We have yearly licensing costs. The license fee can be based on the volume of EPS. Some organizations may have, as a gentlemanly gesture, 10,000 EPS and get a 3,000 EPS license but actually use 5,000 EPS."

"Many clients are not able to purchase the packet capability because there is a huge amount of data, and the cost depends on the number of EPS (Events per second), as well as the number of gigabytes of data per day."

"It is cheap."

"We are on an annual license for the use of the solution."

More NetWitness Platform pricing and cost advice

"The solution’s pricing is aligned with its competitors."

"We inquired about getting support from the vendor, Micro Focus, but the cost was very high."

"Sentinel is moderately priced."

"Sentinel's slightly on the expensive side."

"Sentinel is a subscription-based solution."

"We receive a pricing discount because of our ongoing partnership with Micro Focus."

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Comparison Review

Vinod Shankar

Manager, Enterprise Risk Consulting at Deloitte & Touche

Feb 26, 2015

HP ArcSight vs. IBM QRadar vs. McAfee Nitro vs. Splunk vs. RSA Security vs. LogRhythm

We at Infosecnirvana.com have done several posts on SIEM. After the Dummies Guide on SIEM, we are following it up with a SIEM Product Comparison – 101 deck. So, here it is for your viewing pleasure. Let me know what you think by posting your comments below. The key products compared here are…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

18%

Financial Services Firm

18%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about NetWitness Platform?

The product's initial setup phase was not at all difficult.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetWitness Platform?

The pricing is comparable to others, and I consider the cost to be intermediate. Specific cost details are unknown to me.

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What needs improvement with NetWitness Platform?

There is currently no need for improvement in the SIEM ( /categories/security-information-and-event-management-siem ), though there could be potential enhancements by integrating with AI.

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What do you like most about NetIQ Sentinel?

The solution lets us get all the logs properly and regularly monitor customer infrastructure.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetIQ Sentinel?

Sentinel is moderately priced.

See all answers

What needs improvement with NetIQ Sentinel?

There are still a few vendor-specific devices for which Sentinel needs to work on integration, such as Netskope devices. Also, we often face region-wise outages during operation due to product team...

See all answers

Comparisons

Splunk Enterprise Security vs NetWitness Platform

Compared 22% of the time

IBM Security QRadar vs NetWitness Platform

Compared 19% of the time

Elastic Security vs NetWitness Platform

Compared 13% of the time

RSA enVision vs NetWitness Platform

Compared 10% of the time

Trellix Network Detection and Response vs NetWitness Platform

Compared 8% of the time

More NetWitness Platform Competitors

IBM Security QRadar vs Sentinel

Compared 20% of the time

Splunk Enterprise Security vs Sentinel

Compared 20% of the time

Wazuh vs Sentinel

Compared 17% of the time

Google Chronicle Suite vs Sentinel

Compared 17% of the time

Cortex XSIAM vs Sentinel

Compared 5% of the time

More Sentinel Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

NetWitness Platform

June 2025

Download NetWitness Platform product report

Buyer's Guide

Sentinel

May 2025

Download Sentinel product report

Also Known As

RSA Security Analytics

NetIQ Sentinel, Novell SIEM

Overview

NetWitness Platform is an evolved SIEM and threat detection and response solution that functions as a single, unified platform for ALL your security data. It features an advanced analyst workbench for triaging alerts and incidents, and it orchestrates security operations programs end to end. In short: NetWitness Platform is all you need to run an intelligent SOC.

NetWitness

Sentinel is a full-featured Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) solution that simplifies the deployment, management and day-to-day use of SIEM, readily adapts to dynamic enterprise environments and delivers the true "actionable intelligence" security professionals need to quickly understand their threat posture and prioritize response.

OpenText

Sample Customers

Los Angeles World Airports, Reply

Faysal Bank, GaVI, Handelsbanken, ISC Mªnster, Lambeth Council, Swisscard, The Municipality of Siena, Tukes, University of Dayton, University of the Sunshine Coast

Buyer's Guide

NetWitness Platform vs. Sentinel

June 2025

Free Report: NetWitness Platform vs. Sentinel

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